I have no beef with the New Yorker. Read it heaps. Never subscribed but I have a copy stashed away somewhere as a reminder of a little pilgrimage taken to visit Australian surf journalist Nick Carroll.

Caught the L90 from Dee Why junction to Newps with a hangover so disabling that when we finally got down to the business of a go-out I staggered around the carpark for long minutes in a wetsuit I’d managed to put on back to front.

Oh, he laughed all right.

But I ended up with a copy of the New Yorker and now I can’t remember whether he gave it to me out of pity or whether I trousered it while he wasn’t looking.

It was full of that solid, objective authorial tone, described by Jonathan Franzen thusly: “The precision and the sobriety of which created a kind of negative emotional space, a suggestion of feeling without the naming of it”. The cool all-seeing eye of the author with his “finely wrought prose” –more Franzen – his “well educated white characters”, both written about and for.

I have no beef with Finnegan either. Barbarian Dayswas majestic. But his Slater essay blew goats, to use the Bribie vernacular, a completely different measure.

And finally the little reveal, a little aha moment where the author pulls back the curtain steps into the limelight to applause and all clap and turn sideways and mutter, “He’s ever so clever”.

By that measure Finnegan’s long-form reportage essay on Slater’s pool was note perfect.

I have no beef with Finnegan either. Barbarian Dayswas majestic. But his Slater essay blew goats, to use the Bribie vernacular, a completely different measure.

Allow an explanation. You get the first punch or the last punch. They are the only ones that count. And Finnegan played for the last punch. The definitive one.

On the question of a home-court advantage for Slater at his own pool Finneganallows this howler from Slater: “There’s a lot of guys on tour that have surfed this thing a lot more than I have” to pass without so much as a raised eyebrow.

Really?

A lot of guys on Tour have surfed Kelly’s wave a lot more than Kelly?

Like who?

Name five Kelly.

OK, name one.

With the cool, all-seeing objective authorial eye. With the weight of the famous New Yorker fact-checking team behind him, errors in fact and emphasis; lost opportunities to engage and unchallenged statements become egregious.

He let Slater get away with too much. Maybe the “freebies” he took clouded his judgement. Who knows.

On the question of a home-court advantage for Slater at his own pool Finneganallows this howler from Slater: “There’s a lot of guys on tour that have surfed this thing a lot more than I have” to pass without so much as a raised eyebrow.

Really?

A lot of guys on Tour have surfed Kelly’s wave a lot more than Kelly? Like who?

Name five Kelly.

OK, name one.

A lot of guys were surfing it for the first time. That is true. Practice waves were very hard to come by before the event. That is also true. And the home-court advantage turned out to be very, very real as Slater’s Mephistopheles, Adam Fincham , struggled with the inconsistencies of waves in the tub. Inconsistencies only Slater himself would have been familiar with.

Maybe Bill and his New York elites use words differently to Bribie Island rednecks. Maybe I couldn’t understand his world nor him mine. We’d be like Wittgenstein’s lions to each other.

Like, when I hear a word like democracy or democratize I hear the Greek root Demos, meaning the common people and them having say over a system of government or universal access to something.

But apparently Bill hears something else. He hears the Kelly Slater meaning. So when Kelly says the wave pool will “democratize surfing” he hears that it will make man-made waves available to the tech billionaires and hedge fund jerks who have fifty grand in loose change to buy a wave.

Available to the common people?

Only in theweirdest way possible when WSL tries a roll-out in Australia with the tubs pitched as high-end training centres for the Olympics it’ll be the taxpayer flensed of a few shekels to underwrite the cost.

Did you not ask about the business plan Bill? It really comes across like you were too busy admiring Kelly the “beautiful boy” whose looks have not deserted him.

Oh god, what a little bitch I am.

You let him off the hook big time Bill calling him an “informed environmenalist”. Come now ambassador, you are really spoiling us now. These tubs, hungrily reliant as they are on the two scarcest commodities our environment provides, electricity and water, are a nightmare for dear old Mother Earth.

We’d need 15 or 20 spare ones to all live the life of a Kelly Slater. Maybe New Yorkers don’t see that? I really don’t know. Next time you’re down here I’ll drive you west and we’ll go visit a farm, tell ’em we are going to need megalitres of fresh water to play surfers in a tub. It won’t go down well I tune you, bru. Poor Old Mother Earth wakes up in the morning dreading another dayhaving to provide for the prodigality of Robert K. Slater.

Fact checkers. The famous New Yorker fact checkers. Did they slip out for a coffee when it came time to throw the fat in the fire? You said,“The 2019 Pipe Masters was cancelled, for vague and unpersuasive reasons”.

Incorrect.

There were rumours of a massive tour change that were never confirmed and permit issues with the Honolulu bureacracy. Pipe Masters is on Dec 2019.

I know it’s nit picking but it’s the fucking New Yorker.

You said, “An enormous square pool in Australia opened recently, with a mechanism that is basically a giant plunger.”

Incorrect. The pool is circular/oval and it hasn’t opened. They ran a test over two days. It remains closed to the public and will be for the forseeable future.

It kills me to grind away like this, to have to do the fact-checking for the great and venerable New Yorker. But, fuck it Bill.

You offered no objective observations on the WSL’s Grand Plan of making pro surfing accessible to the masses. You describe the pool as being “broadcast ready” but could make no judgement about the incomprehensible nature of it in terms of being a scoring sport?

Isn’t that a crucial part of the puzzle? If surfers can’t understand it, how can Joe Sixpack in buttefuck Missouri?

Watch: Made in the USA! Your Guide to Great American Surf Co’s!

Can you imagine anything more American than Futures Fins from Huntington Beach?

New Jersey changed me. You may recall that I was there earlier in the year in order to coordinate our Fairytale Wetsuit shoot featuring the wonderful Tommy Ihnken though, before leaving I will admit that I wasn’t thrilled.

The Garden State doesn’t have the best reputation, see, and I never liked Zack Braff. I thought it was going to be bad, slow, ugly with bad, slow, ugly food and bad, slow, ugly people.

I could not have been more wrong.

An energy crackled in the air. Crackled off the boardwalk, through the streets, from The Stone Pony where Bruce Springsteen first played. I fell in love with New Jersey and its everything but mostly its pork rolls and, in turn, fell in love with America again.

Behind those industrial walls in a bland industrial park, Futures feels like a cross between Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and a Detroit, Michigan Ford plant. Dreams are being dreamed in the front. Dreams are being milled in the back.

This country, to many, seems a train wreck but it’s also a grand train wreck with Bruce Springsteen crooning blue collard anthems and Americans drinking Coors and Coors Light and those Americans manufacturing. Americans like the ones at Futures Fins in Huntington Beach manufacturing fins that make your board go better.

Behind those industrial walls in a bland industrial park, Futures feels like a cross between Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and a Detroit, Michigan Ford plant. Dreams are being dreamed in the front. Dreams are being milled in the back. Brett Simpson’s American spirit floats and inspires and Brett Simpson’s actual body (feat. his spirit) shows up from time to time as well. It is, truly, a wonder to watch the time, the effort and the skill put into these fins.

True labors of local love.

And can you imagine anything better? Anything more American?

Watch this little tour and if you don’t feel inspired then get the hell out with all the other draft dodgers and flag haters.

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Technology: The modern poetic mysticism of served internet advertisements!

At this point we are, every one of us, very used to being served advertisements as we wander the vast digital world. Even though I am co-owner of a robust website chronicling the joys of a surfing life, I know very little about how it all works. There is an instant marketplace, I think, where brands or products bid for on site real-estate and that real-estate can also be sold outright.

The World Surf League made a robust media buy ahead of the Pipeline Master in Tender and Loving Memory of Andy Irons. It purchased advertisements across surf media, from Stab to The Inertia, from Surfer to Surfer Today with only li’l old us being left in the instant marketplace, where Gamestop and Volvo bash each other for access to your eyeballs.

Oh, I don’t mind being forgotten by the World Surf League for I, like some ancient Chinese mystic, enjoy reading the served advertisements like tea leaves. You of course know the served ads reflect both you, your personal browsing history, and the collective zeitgeist of the website you are visiting. The sage can peer deeply into this bowl and discern greater truths about the universe and greater truths about himself through this process.

Yesterday, for example, right after it was announced that the World Surf League had suspended a hard-working young man for doing what surfers on the North Shore do, I was served a Chicken of the Sea advertisement right where the World Surf League advertisement would have gone had they purchased the slot like they did everywhere else.

Chicken of the Sea is a canned tuna brand here in the United States but now it is also the official byline of the World Surf League and/or the World Surf League’s new title sponsor.

The World Surf League “Chicken of the Sea”

It has a ring, no?

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Pipe Trials winner Ryan Callinan turns several shades of colour lighter as he falls, like all of us, under Ms Hodge's spell.

Ryan Callinan Wins Pipeline Masters Trials at “Schizophrenic” Pipe!

Australian wraps fabulous year; Hawaiian with South African accent qualifies for main event…

In onshore four-foot waves reminiscent of summertime Australia, Ryan Callinan has won the Pipe Masters Trials and, therefore, entry into the main event.

Ryan, who is twenty-six, negotiated, cleanly, two tubes, finishing a wonderfully successful 2018 where he placed fourth on the qualifying series and second as a wildcard at the Quiksilver Pro in France.

You may remember Ryan as a rookie on the tour in 2016 where he struggled, terribly, to replicate his dazzling surfing (as seen in Kai Neville’s movies) and where he finished 34th and was relegated back to the bush leagues.

Runner-up to Ryan, the South African/Hawaiian, Benji Brand, will also compete in the main event.

“I used to really hate Pipe,” says Benji here, “but I’ve grown to love it. I see it’s where the epitome of surfing and barrel-riding is. I used to be terrible out there.”

“They’re humble warriors, they throw themselves under the hood, left and right,” said Joe Turpel.

Ross Williams, moonlighting as a commentator with his star pupil still out of the game, described Pipe as “schizophrenic”, which it clearly was.

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Meanwhile, Michael Rodrigues' Instagram has been pulled, but not before this PR-approved post that said, in Portuguese and among other platitudes, "I reject all acts of violence against me, or against any other living being. Nothing justifies the aggression I have received, so I feel obliged to take all reasonable steps to ensure that unfortunate events such as these do not recur, with me, or against any other athlete and/or person.

Koa Rothman, “That was the biggest bullshit call from the WSL. A bunch of fucking corporate pussies!”

((i) Monetary Fines and Disqualification.First Offense: $5,000 USD and automatic disqualification from remainder of the Competitive Event. Disqualification may be waived in a “mutual combat” type situation.Second Offense: $10,000 USD and automatic disqualification from remainder of the Competitive Event.Third Offense: $15,000 USD and automatic disqualification from remainder of the Competitive Event.)

Earlier today, I called Koa, who’d just lost his round one heat at the Pipe Trials, for further comment.

“That was the biggest bullshit call I’ve ever seen from the WSL,” said Koa. “Tanner works a normal job at home, flies over here, doesn’t have a sponsor, gets in a fight, beats up someone who wanted a fight and gets kicked out of the contest. It was a fair fight. The Brazilian had his friends there and they ran away. It’s not like any of Tanner’s friends jumped in. The kid put his hands up. It was a fair fight. What if Tanner got beat up? Would he have been kicked out then?”

Koa pauses, winds up a little.

“A bunch of fucking corporate pussies run that show (WSL). It was a terrible, terrible call.”

I mention the relative civility of the fight. No blood, no breaks.

“I’ve seen guys end up in hospital for days,” says Koa. “That was not even close to a bad fight. Everyone’s a pussy. It’s not even the WSL’s business. It’s no one’s business. It’s the two people fighting’s business. They think they own these surfers…